Devuan Beta Released
 

Read the story in The Register:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04..._reaches_beta/

Get it here:

https://files.devuan.org/devuan_jessie_beta/

I threw it into VirtualBox tonight. A full install took about 45 minutes. At one point, it choked on installing a bit of software and threw an error message which allowed me to restart the "Install Software" step. When that step restarted, it thought a moment, then picked up where it had left off.

The "Devuan Default Desktop" appears to be XFCE, but others are available in the install routine.

You can see a screenshot here: http://www.pineviewfarm.net/weblog/w.../05/Devuan.jpg

The first time I clicked in the VM, the standard XFCE wallpaper appeared. I replaced it with something from the Devuan wallpaper library, so here's another screenshot that's not as boring.

http://www.pineviewfarm.net/weblog/w...05/Devuan1.jpg

I haven't done anything with it beyond installing it. Mostly I was curious, but I'll probably play with it over the next few days.

Very nice.

I grabbed the ISO the day of the release. Have a place for it to install but haven't done it yet.

Interesting project. Look forward to the joy of trying it.

One thing I have found is that going to, when using the Debian installer so I assume it still works with Devaun, is that changing to tty4 will give you the error messages. This is handy.

In the installer you are working from tty1 and can switch back to it easily.

When I get a stall like you experienced I do exactly what you did. If, however, that doesn't work I have had very good results from switching to tty2 and running;
which generally has broken things loose.

Another thing to keep in mind is that you probably have enough installed to actually function to a great extent. If you abort an install at that sort of error, or can't get it to clear and then have to abort, you can chroot in and probably finish the install if you have edited the install media out of the /etc/apt/sources.list. The installer functions are still in the new system so it will try to finish. You just have more options and power dealing with it from another install or a well set up Live system on a stick.

The install is very like the Debian install. Indeed, I'm using it from a VM right now. They seem to have a fairly nice set of repos--so for, everything I've tried to install (which is not really much: keepassx, gufw, and a few other programs) is in the repos.

It also offers a choice among multiple desktops at time of install: KDE, XFCE (which also appears to be the default), LXDE, MATE, Openbox, and others I can't remember off the top of my head. You can select multiple desktops at time of install, which is sweet.

If you select multiple DEs and they each include a display manager, if offers you an option to pick the DM you prefer. (I would suggest avoiding Slim; at least in a VM, it does not offer an easy way of accessing a session manager to change DEs.)

Although I downloaded the fill DVD image, I think the installer for all practical purposes did a net install. A full install with KDE and MATE desktops is about 3.4 GB, per du.

It looks like a nice job of work; it was, of course, built on a rock-solid foundation.

Whether or not it will catch on is quite another question.

After I use it a little more, I'll likely do an LQ blog post about it.

I've been running Devuan since April or May 2015 for PC and laptop.

Yeap.

Devuan offers systemd stuff as an option the end user can decide.

Very nice. I've got it on a VM right now, but looking forward to trying it on some physical hardware as soon as I can spare a few bucks and a bit of time.

It's nice when you are given a choice in the matter.